Does your business have customers? Do you sell products or provide services to clients? If yes, chances are that your business employs some sort of case management practices. Most business professionals associate case management with the health care or legal fields. However, case management processes are prevalent in the majority of companies in all industries. With the advances in business process management (BPM) techniques and development of cloud services, organizations are now able to switch from the old-fashioned case management to more dynamic and adaptive systems. Dynamic case management supercharges knowledge worker productivity and powers business activities such as investigations, risk management, customer complaints, client management, collaboration, and much more.

What Is Dynamic Case Management?

Dynamic case management (DCM), also known as adaptive case management, is a family of solutions bringing together information, processes, and people utilizing a mixed set of controls that are human- and system-driven. DCM handles tacit interactions and static processes to provide 360-degree views of cases and significantly optimize business processes. Case management is either customer- or service-facing and at the same time people, process, and information intensive, with a need to track cross-functional and decision-intensive processes.

DCM encompasses a great variety of case types and processes, whether a business is in the healthcare, finance, education, wholesale, or another industry. There are many examples of case-based applications: insurance claims, customer service, virtual patient records, compliance, loan processing, employee on-boarding, account opening, and so forth. Managing cases involves a multitude of elements including but not limited to data, people, content, collaboration, reporting, policies, events, communications, and processes.

The dynamic nature of today’s business environment calls for agile processes that support changes in regulations, employee demands, and client expectations. Workers are now handling a greater variety of tasks, collaborating for quicker case resolutions, and dealing with exceptions. Additional challenges that businesses are facing include the need to reduce operating costs, retain and acquire customers, and minimize risk. Organizations find their greatest opportunity in reducing operational costs with becoming more agile. Dynamic business platforms help companies improve process efficiency, knowledge management, and information sharing, as well as encourage collaboration across the business and its ecosystem.

DCM applications nourish business operations by supplying companies with inexpensive but highly flexible solutions to transform processes. DCM products are Web based and are delivered using the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. This means that companies do not have to revamp currently running systems and applications, nor do they have to tear down anything within the previous infrastructure. DCM applications simply integrate with the existing framework and also help link previously fragmented processes. DCM tools do not require expensive hardware or software. Organizations can usually select from prebuilt case management frameworks to mold the final application to specific requirements.

Using DCM tools, organizations are already effectively managing all sorts of structured, unstructured, and unexpected work. Employing best practices and built for continuous change, DCM solutions combine core and enterprise content management (ECM) with predictive analytics, business rules, and social collaboration to improve case outcomes while optimizing productivity and managing risk.

In customer service, professional expertise and fast processing have a significant impact on customer satisfaction. The idea of providing good customer service is easy to embrace but can be tricky to implement. In order to handle rising complaints and customer demands, organizations employ DCM to run agile service processes and overcome the challenges of the unpredictable business and customer service environment. DCM tools provide organizations with simple ways to track customer complaints and service issues and improve customer relationships—handling correspondence, documents, contacts, conversations, and follow-ups, which are all kept organized and are easy to retrieve. DCM applications afford enterprises the opportunity to retain and gain customers by efficiently handling customer complaints, thereby learning from customers and earning their loyalty.

Investigations are becoming more complex as more elements have to be scrutinized, whether its fraud and abuse, audit tracking regulatory compliance, or other cases. Successful investigations now involve team collaboration and third-party interactions and greatly benefit from well-organized records and documents. DCM applications simplify investigative case handling by providing tools for effective information management and communication for faster case resolutions. With the workflow- and Web-based system it is easy to track, manage, and learn from every investigation phase. Organizations are utilizing DCM applications and ensuring compliance, shorter investigative processing times, and more thorough investigations.

Risk Management

Managing risk is one of the top priorities of small business and enterprise customers alike in today’s challenging economic environment. Embedding risk management procedures into everyday processes at each organizational level allows companies to truly deliver business value. DCM is the enabling technology that facilitates streamlined capture, assessment, qualification, quantification, as well as processing and reporting of operational risk. The flexible DCM applications employ integrated and comprehensive data management while keeping track of selected activities. Businesses use centralized risk management systems that provide a clear view into the entire process and allow them to identify and measure risk, as well as mitigate and monitor continuously.

As can be seen, dynamic case management is relevant for businesses in all industries. DCM applications enable companies to automate and track inconsistent incidents, manage risks and expenses associated with servicing customer requests, respond to changes in regulations, increase collaboration to support unstructured processes, and much more. Which business processes in your organization can benefit from DCM?

Glen Schrank is the CEO of Eccentex, a leader in dynamic case management (DCM) cloud solutions. The company’s platform provides value to customers in the growing DCM market serving all industries, including financial, government, and healthcare.